The Hunt for Red October and Face of the Enemy.

In space, all warriors are cold warriors. And none are colder, perhaps, than the steely Romulans who crew those imposingly green warbirds. In the sixth-season TNG episode “Face of the Enemy,” the normally warm-hearted Counselor Deanna Troi must join their ranks as she impersonates Major Rakal, a ruthless operative in the Tal Shiar, the Romulan intelligence service. This popular story was inspired, in part, by Tom Clancy’s thriller The Hunt for Red October—particularly the movie adaptation starring Sean Connery as a Soviet submarine commander who attempts to defect to the West. In fact, when writer Naren Shankar was at work on the script, it was Connery’s voice he imagined for the captain of the Romulan ship.

In this episode of Primitive Culture, host Duncan Barrett is joined by Carlos Miranda, a massive fan of The Hunt for Red October, to discuss the film’s influence on “Face of the Enemy.” We then open up the discussion and look at the role of the Romulans as primary Cold War antagonist in Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as some other episodes involving defections across Star Trek’s own iron curtain: the Neutral Zone. Finally, we consider how the Enterprise’s various Romulan encounters might play into the new Picard series coming in early 2020.

Star Trek and Dr. Who, with Una McCormack. The author of tie-in fiction of both these long-running franchises joins us to look at the parallels between the two and why they have survived for more than half a century.

The Hunt for Red October and “Face of the Enemy.” We take a look at the Cold War thriller and consider parallels between the film’s depiction of defection across the Iron Curtain and some of TNG’s Romulan storylines.

Stuart Baird and Star Trek: Nemesis. We look at the final film outing for the crew of The Next Generation and how it compares with director Stuart Baird’s two previous films: Executive Decision and U.S. Marshals.

An International Approach to Star Trek. Is the franchise’s vision of the future one that could only have sprung from mid-20th-century America? What might Star Trek have looked like had it emerged from a very different culture?